LOS ANGELES THEATER REVIEWS

When I heard The Aerospace Players were going to present A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, I almost decided not to see it as I have seen it twice before and never really understood why the show was just not as funny as it ought to be. Now I know why - those other shows did not have Da...

Actor/singer Scott Dreier is, by self-description, consumed with Doris Day. He has been a fan since a tender age, watching every Doris Day movie and listening to every Day album hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. We all love Day. Who doesn't? She symbolizes all that is sweet and good in life! Bec...

Playwright Ken Ludwig (Lend Me a Tenor, Moon Over Buffalo as well as Leading Ladies) is one of a dying breed of American farceurs. How many presently exist? In the UK, yes, there are many. Farce is their specialty, but not in the US. So, that given, Leading Ladies is a uniquely special ode to the th...

Ah, the rhythms of the 50s/60s! Got 'A Lot of Livin' to Do'! Lee Adams and Charles Strouse wrote the music and lyrics of Bye Bye Birdie to honor a generation of fans who swooned and literally gave themselves over to the rock and roll of Elvis Presley. Conrad Birdie (Austin MacPhee) is an obvious pla...

Each year, Long Beach Playhouse closes its Mainstage Season with a musical. This year it's presenting the popular classic, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF with music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein. When it opened on Broadway 50 years ago in 1964, the musical was nominated for...

While there is speculation that Twelfth Night was written for the 12th night of Christmas by request of Queen Elizabeth, a holiday which celebrates revelry by turning the world upside down, with masks, music, dance, celebrating a moment where servants are masters, masters are servants, and not all s...

Once/book by Enda Walsh/music & lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova/directed by John Tiffany/Pantages Theatre/through August 10...

Lively and electrified by its talented, winsome lead actors, this new admirable local production of the Tony Award-winning IN THE HEIGHTS has just been extended for additional performances in its Anaheim Hills home through August 8---and deservedly so. Overall, this new OC production crackles with a...

The world premiere of Peter Lefcourt's play THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT takes an in-depth and often comic look at two couples, a pair of ex-spouses and their new mates. When the four get together for the first time in years, it blows up in a delightful mess of romantic complications proving you should...

"Sing Me Home" is a new musical set to premiere at the prestigious New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) on July 20th but Los Angeles had the honor of hosting its debut at Rockwell on Sunday, July 13th. Featuring a variety of performers, each song was introduced by writing team, Amber Cassell or ...

To set the record straight, actor Michael Urie introduces Buyer & Cellar by stating quite emphatically that what we are about to see is a fiction. He then holds up a copy of Barbra Streisand's book My Passion for Design published in 2010. In it Streisand describes her dream house. This book fed play...

It is a chilling conclusion when Kimberly Scott repeats the text of the prologue again at the end of ROMEO AND JULIET while standing over the dead bodies of the lovers. You can hear the bitter warning in her voice as she slowly looks from one end of the stage to the other at two fathers who have pai...

Belonging to the Golden Age of Broadway musicals, Damn Yankees opened in New York in 1955, winning 7 Tony Awards and was made into a feature film in 1958, starring its original Tony winners Ray Walston and Gwen Verdon. In fact, Damn Yankees sparked the long-time fruitful collaboration between Verdon...

Popular across the country for the past decade, Always Patsy Cline celebrates country/pop superstar Patsy Cline, her music and her warm down.to.earth persona. Endearing from the get go it stars the very funny and endearing Sally Struthers as Texas housewife Louise Seger and Carter Calvert as Cline. ...

Great to see TV veterans (of 1980's hit dramas) Bruce Weitz (Hill Street Blues) and Christina Pickles (St. Elsewhere) really enjoy themselves treading the stages of the Colony Theatre....

If you grew up in the '90s, you know exactly how Alanis Morissette impacted music. She burst onto the scene with her hit single 'You Outta Know' and followed it with hit after hit all from her album Jagged Little Pill. Alanis shaped an entire generation of strong women and her powerful voice, attitu...

Described as 'modern vaudeville,' Clockwork Follies at Rockwell manages to take a classic, almost-forgotten form of entertainment and transform it for today's audience. The show is comprised of a mixture of performers - a musical comedy troupe, beautiful dancers, a comedian, a magician, a French cha...

There is no redemption in OTHELLO. Shakespeare has provided no late opportunity to undo what has been done, no chance to make amends for the terrible wrongs lavished upon the innocent, and no way for the audience to feel anything but horror for the treachery that has filled the stage for two and a h...

Within the courtyard of the historic Pico House in downtown LA, the Downtown Repertory Theater Company is in the midst of offering its sixth season of classical works. Led by artistic director Devon Armstrong, they have taken on Chekhov, Marlowe, Odets and numerous plays by Shakespeare, all while en...

At first I thought, 'Oh, finally a tribute to Annette Funicello! It's about time.' Wrong!! Without Annette - without a net - is about an improv class with a mixed group of actors ranging in age from old to young, consummate pro to no experience, manic to laid back - you name it, that person is there...

The Manor/written by Kathrine Bates/directed by Flora Plumb/Theatre 40 at Greystone/select performances through August 16/(consult www.theatre40.org)...

Yes, it takes a village. Shakespeare Orange County has pulled out all the stops, and even enlisted a not-so-secret weapon, to accomplish an extraordinarily beautiful debut in its first official production under new artistic director John Walcutt...

Over the past ten years, Independent Shakespeare Co. has staked its claim on the city of Los Angeles with its 'of the people, by the people, for the people' brand of Shakespeare. Built from the ground up by two regular people (Melissa Chalsma and David Melville) who love what they do, they have crea...

It was a pleasure to return to Kritzerland Sunday July 6 for its 47th show saluting Off-Broadway shows: Kritzerland Goes Off-Broadway. Featured were stalwart hits: Hair, Ruthless!, Little Mary Sunshine, Dames at Sea, Falsettos, The Fantasticks and more recent hits such as Floyd Collins, Jason Robert...

Very witty script, without one false note, by Ian MacAllister-McDonald; even strong-handed direction by Elina de Santos; and executed by a very abled cast of five make for a wonderful 90-minutes of very strong entertaining theatre....